Target Pics - Follow-up to Flyers

[12many]

Hi everyone. In follow-up to the thread about flyers, on a recent range trip I used a much more stable bench. The target was right at 50 yards and it was cold and windy, maybe 5 to 15 gusts with tall berms on each side of the range. I was shooting 40 grn vmax Fiocchi 223 in a a CZ varmint with a 6-18x Nikon Buckmaster. The rifle was support front and back with bags and my shoulder. Most all the shots looked good when released through the scope as the rifle was steady.

The attached are the only two targets I shot. It has some 22 LR for a rifle I was sighting in so those can be ignored. The bulls are numbered based on the order I shot. The first group was a cold barrel / cold shooter but things improved from there. All bulls are three shots.

Those flyer from before seemed to disappear so IMO, it was the shooter and less steady rest that was causing the flyers on the last range trip. Overall I am pleased with the accuracy. I think many of these groups would stay less than an inch at 100 with a better shooter and good weather. I don't think wind had too much affect at 50 yards.

That's all. Just thought I would share.

 

[carbine85]

Those look much improved but a 5 round group might tell you more and the groups will open up at 100 yards. It looks like it should get the job done.

 

[taliv]

nice shooting!

 

[strambo]

Hmmm...though a steady rest is critical I wouldn't be too quick to discount flyers as flyers based on this. The problem with 3 shot groups is they are too small of a sample size statistically.

I assume you had the same point of aim for each group. If you were to overlay all the groups into a 24 round composite group, you would have an excellent representation of what the rifle is capable of at that range from that rest with that ammo.

Notice how the center of each group is slightly different? When you overlay them, you can see how a "flyer" in one group would get the space between filled in with bullet holes from the others making it just part of the composite and not truly an outlier.

Not being critical though, this rifle shows great potential! Group #1 looks to be a pretty true sample size. From eyeballing the targets, in a 24rd composite, the top bullet in #7 and the bottom one at 7 o'clock in group #1 would likely be the extreme spread of the 24 rd group. Still looks to be hovering around 1-1.5 MOA for all.